Can public shaming work?

Some criminal punishments haven’t changed much from the days of scarlet letters and the stocks.

In Ohio, a judge ordered Edmond Avid to hold up a sign, saying he was a bully and picked on disabled children:

“I AM A BULLY! I pick on children that are disabled, and I am intolerant of those that are different from myself. My actions do not reflect an appreciation for the diverse South Euclid community that I live in.”

The punishment came after he pleaded no contest to charges he harassed his neighbor and her disabled children for 15 years. But are these public displays of humiliation actually helping to stop crime?

Attorney Howard Stiller, in an interview with Albany, Ga.’s WALB-TV, says the punishment can work on those who have a large social standing.

“Some people whose social standing and perception of themselves as an upstanding citizen is important to them, that’s going to have an effect on them,” he said.

Peggy McGarry, the director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, told the National Journal in 2013 that the practice of public shaming does not have much, if any, data backing it up as a successful deterrent to crime.

“In a small town or even a small city, subjecting someone to this might cause them to lose their job or jeopardize their chances for future employment, housing, and/or credit, and subject family members to humiliation,” McGarry wrote.

On Debate.org, 47 percent of people believe public shaming is an appropriate means of punishing criminal offenders.